Frances Bodomo
| Frances Bodomo | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1988 Ghana |
| 🏡 Residence | New York |
| 🏳️ Nationality | Ghanaian |
| 🏫 Education | Columbia University and Tisch School of the Arts |
| 🎓 Alma mater | Columbia University, New York University |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| Known for | Collective: Unconscious (2016), Boneshaker (2013) and Afronauts (2014) |
| Notable work | Boneshaker and Afronauts |
| Style | Writer/director |
| Movement | Afropolitan filmmakers |
| 🏅 Awards | Sloan Short Film Production Grant from New York University in 2013, TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund in 2014 |
| 🌐 Website | http://tobogganeer.tumblr.com/ |
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Nuotama Frances Bodomo (born 1988) is a Ghanaian filmmaker, writer and director. Her work features "doppelgangers, imaginary friends, ventriloquist dummies, and the un-institutionalized crazies who constantly break society’s view of itself."[1]
Biography and career
Bodomo was born and raised in Ghana. She was also raised in Norway and Hong Kong, before moving to New York to study film at Columbia University (BA) and NYU’s Tisch Film School (MFA).[2] Her first film, Boneshaker (2013), starring Oscar nominee Quvenzhané Wallis, premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival before playing at SXSW, Pan African Film Festival, and Lincoln Center’s African Film Festival. [3] Her film Afronauts (2014) had its US premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival,[4] its international premiere at the 2014 Berlin International Film Festival,[5] and was included in the exhibition "Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016" at the Whitney Museum of American Art.[6]
She was named one of Filmmaker' magazine's "25 New Faces in Independent Film" in 2014.[7] She is based in New York City.[8]
She most recently directed the short segment "Everybody Dies!" for the omnibus feature Collective: Unconscious (2016), which premiered at the 2016 SXSW Film Festival. It won Best Experimental Short at the 2016 BlackStar Film Festival. In Film Quarterly, Vol. 71, Number 2, in a Black Film dossier titled "Death Grips,"[9] by Michael Boyce Gillespie, Bodomo explains her 2016 film segment Everybody Dies!,
"I was being asked to make a dream film and I was having a lot of nightmares surrounding police violence and those were the images in my mind . . . . The emotional center of my film is a woman named Elizabeth Poles. She was an older black woman who got up one day and just started walking. She was walking on the highway in Virginia and had been seen in various states dressed head to toe in black with a black bag and a cane. There was an emotional weight about her in this very frantic moment that stuck with me.
In 2018, Bodomo was a writer and director on Random Acts of Flyness, an HBO series created by Terence Nance.[10] Her short film Everybody Dies! was incorporated into the pilot episode.[11] [12]
Boneshaker, based on personal experience, tells the story of Blessing, a young African girl in America, played by Beasts of the Southern Wild break-out star Quvenzhané Wallis. The film begins with Blessing throwing a tantrum; unlike her sister, played by Playshena Rose Thomas, Blessing is not well-behaved, and her Ghanaian grandmother is convinced that she is possessed by an evil spirit. With the two daughters reluctantly in tow, Blessing’s family travels through Louisiana to a church by the river, Fire Power Ministries, run by "God’s Warrior Princess" Dr. Stella Gwandiku, to save their child.
Afronauts is set on July 16, 1969, the day the Americans launched for the moon, and paints a poetic and surreal picture of Matha Mwamba—a sixteen-year-old Zambian girl—training to land on Mars. With accompanying actors dressed in khaki uniforms and combat helmets and Matha in her space suit and helmet, Bodomo fuses Zambia's military past—the fight for independence was recent—and an imagined intergalactic future; militaries are closely connected to space missions, and both are about claiming place and conquest. Inviting the viewer to contemplate history and our futures, Bodomo revisits and honors Nkoloso’s imagination and expands the narrative of the space race beyond the superpowers.[13]
Bodomo is currently developing the feature version of Afronauts, which is supported by the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, IFP's Emerging Storytellers program, and the Alfred P Sloan Foundation.
FAVORITE FILMMAKERS: John Cassavetes, Werner Herzog, Harmony Korine. These are people who make very rough movies that kind of feel human. They make a lot of movies about outsiders, without being pity parties—without being patronizing.[14]
Filmography
- Boneshaker (2013)
- Afronauts (2014)
- Collective: Unconscious (segment "Everybody Dies!") (2016)
See also
References
- ↑ "Frances Bodomo by Katie Bradshaw - BOMB Magazine". bombmagazine.org. Retrieved 2018-03-03.
- ↑ Asch, Mark (2016-10-13). "30 Under 30: Frances Bodomo, Filmmaker". Brooklyn Magazine. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
- ↑ "Cinema Today — Film Blackness: Screening of various films by Frances Bodomo and Ja'Tovia Gary". Lewis Center for the Arts. Retrieved 2018-03-10.
- ↑ "AFRONAUTS to premiere at SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2014". Powder Room Films. Archived from the original on 2018-09-20. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
- ↑ "AFRONAUTS: international premiere at Berlinale 2014". Powder Room Films. Archived from the original on 2018-09-20. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
- ↑ "Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016 | Whitney Museum of American Art". whitney.org. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
- ↑ Rizov, Vadim. "Frances Bodomo | Filmmaker Magazine". Filmmaker' Magazine. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
- ↑ Asch, Mark (2016-10-13). "30 Under 30: Frances Bodomo, Filmmaker". Brooklyn Magazine. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
- ↑ "Winter 2017: Volume 71, Number 2". Film Quarterly. 2017-12-04. Retrieved 2018-03-03.
- ↑ "Terence Nance on "Random Acts of Flyness": How HBO's most daring show gets made". Salon. 2018-08-23. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
- ↑ "Terence Nance Is Indescribable". The Ringer. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
- ↑ "Watch: The First Episode of 'Random Acts of Flyness' Teaches the Art of Collaboration". No Film School. 2018-08-05. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
- ↑ Quick, Genevieve. "Whose Place, Whose Space?: Extraterrestrial Stakes | Art Practical". Art Practical. Retrieved 2018-03-03.
- ↑ "Discovery: Frances Bodomo - Interview Magazine". Interview Magazine. 2013-01-28. Retrieved 2018-03-10.
External links
- Frances Bodomo Filmography at Internet Movie Database.
- "Frances Bodomo by Katie Bradshaw" Archived 2017-03-12 at the Wayback Machine, Katie Bradshaw Bomb Magazine. July 9, 2013.
- "25 New Faces of Independent Film", Scott Macaulay. Filmmaker. [2014]
- "30 Under 30: Frances Bodomo, Filmmaker", Mark Asch. Brooklyn Magazine. October 13, 2016.
- "Death Grips" A Black Film Dossier by Michael Boyce Gillespie, Film Quarterly. December 4, 2017.
- "Whose Place, Whose Space?: Extraterrestrial Stakes" Genevieve Quick, Art Practical. February 13, 2018.
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